HotGritz said:

^ Give humanity's history I would say yes. There always seems to be the need for a "leader" which is fine but then we tear down the very person/persons we build up to lead us. Dysfunctional to say the least.

I mean...THINK about it...let's say that we colonize a few solar systems. Initially each system would probably have independent governing bodies. Then, being the warlike creatures that we are, we'd have intergalactic wars. BILLIONS would die. Then someone says, "Hey, let's have ONE governing body to rule us all!" No more infighting. Kind of how Europe has evolved (since the fall of Rome) from independent kingdoms, to nations, to the E.U. that makes everyone "united". I mean...is there any chance that Germany is going to invade Poland again anytime soon? And the Middle East...I've heard that there's a longing to return to the days of a Caliph ruling everyone. And let's not get started on NAFTA.

So...how do you get possibly TRILLIONS of human beings spread across countless worlds to ELECT one leader? YOU DON'T. You have people (the "elite") do that for you.

Of course, we have to survive the next few decades as a species before we have to worry about this crap.

Am I jacking this thread???

HotGritz said:

PurpleJedi said:

HotGritz said:

^ Give humanity's history I would say yes. There always seems to be the need for a "leader" which is fine but then we tear down the very person/persons we build up to lead us. Dysfunctional to say the least.

I mean...THINK about it...let's say that we colonize a few solar systems. Initially each system would probably have independent governing bodies. Then, being the warlike creatures that we are, we'd have intergalactic wars. BILLIONS would die. Then someone says, "Hey, let's have ONE governing body to rule us all!" No more infighting. Kind of how Europe has evolved (since the fall of Rome) from independent kingdoms, to nations, to the E.U. that makes everyone "united". I mean...is there any chance that Germany is going to invade Poland again anytime soon? And the Middle East...I've heard that there's a longing to return to the days of a Caliph ruling everyone. And let's not get started on NAFTA.

So...how do you get possibly TRILLIONS of human beings spread across countless worlds to ELECT one leader? YOU DON'T. You have people (the "elite") do that for you.

Of course, we have to survive the next few decades as a species before we have to worry about this crap.

Am I jacking this thread???

I fucking love this post. Jack away!!!!

And to your last sentence. I do not see us surviving long enough to build societies on other planets....not with out divine/extraterrestrial intervention. We need other beings to help better ourselves.

I dread the notion of colonizing another planet given what we've done to this one. This world was beautiful until we fucked it up. No progress at all.

Deadflow3r said:

Good question.

We know many things now we didn't know before but we have lost touch with the basics.

Example. My grandmother came to this country at 15 from Italy, around the year 1918. She met and married a 19 year old man from Italy and they went on to have 11 children together.

Felicia Giorgio lived to be 42. She could only speak Italian and she never read in any language. Her children helped her with banking and any area where she needed translation.

What Felicia could do is what we can no longer do. She had basic survival skills; raised chickens and killed them, grew vegetables, cooked everything from scratch and keep a family of 13 well fed and healthy. My grandefather was a butcher until the Depression. People back then could pretty much keep everything they owned in running order themselves.

I have never grown vegetables or killed anything bigger than a bug. I know nothing about wiring, plumbing or carpentry or bricklaying.

If we face an Armegeddon like situation I fear that many of us do not have the basic survival skills to pull through it.

We talk of the increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor. I think there is also a huge gap in survival skills and education between the haves and the have nots.

Obviously my post needs another looking at.

We don't have people on this planet with strong survival skills and moving to another place in the solar system is not going to help.

Regressing on almost every level that counts.

It’s a very open-ended question, but I would say at a high-level we’ve progressed incredibly. Certainly those of us in industrialized countries are better off than we used to be. I think that’s an absolute no-brainer. Vaccinations & improved diets have reduced childhood mortality. Middle and lower class people have access to a diet and general lifestyle that only a few generations ago were accessible to only the richest elite. Even the poorest in industrialized nations generally have a lifestyle that is far, far superior to the way most people in equivalent nations lived 100 years ago. That’s not meant to downplay the existence of the real poverty and the economic backsliding of the past ½ decade, but to put into perspective the real gains that have been realized.

To the extent it can be reliably measured (since historical data is so fragmentary) almost every area of the planet has improved in the last 100 years in what I would consider the major markers: life expectancy and poverty. There are extreme places of misery where those markers have worsened, but overall there has been significant improvement. In India and China alone it’s not an exaggeration to say that hundreds of millions of people have come out of extreme poverty, peasant existence to attain a reasonably comfortable life. Those particular countries face significant hurdles, no question, but real improvements have been recognized, & there’s very good reason to think they can sustain and improve on those gains.

I think the question mark that hovers over all of that is sustainability and whether that success can be spread to the areas where misery is the most entrenched. To the extent I possess any kind of faith, it’s a faith in the ability of scientific progress to meet power, water and food requirements while coping with environmental issues. Those are not trivial problems, but I think our best impulses – ingenuity, rationality – can beat our worst impulses – primitive superstition, short-term thinking, provincial thinking instead of global thinking - if we foster a scientific attitude and fight against woolly-headed beliefs. I’m more pessimistic that the governments in Africa and latin America, that I think contribute so much to the misery of their populations, will be changed – or at least changed for the better.

HotGritz said:

Sometimes I think human beings just suck and that the world is ever increasingly becoming a rotten place. Never ending wars, broken families, increased violence against those that can't defend themselves, pollution, greed, perversity, cruelty, agism, sexism, fanaticism, disease, apathy, slores built up as role models etc.

One can argue that these ills have always been part of the global society but if we can advance in areas such as technology and construction; building better computers and taller buildings then why can't we become better human beings?

Discuss

We are progressing into regression, as a means to our end.

Beautifulstarr123 said:

Progressing scientifically and technically, yes. Spiritually, not at all.

The more we think we know about science, the more spiritual we will also grow.

Is what I believe.

Tremolina said:

Beautifulstarr123 said:

Progressing scientifically and technically, yes. Spiritually, not at all.

The more we think we know about science, the more spiritual we will also grow.

Is what I believe.

That's an interesting theory, but IMO completely opposite of what's happening in society today. Science seems to be replacing spirituality overall.

PurpleJedi said:

Tremolina said:

The more we think we know about science, the more spiritual we will also grow.

Is what I believe.

That's an interesting theory, but IMO completely opposite of what's happening in society today. Science seems to be replacing spirituality overall.

Seems yes.

I am a firm believer that the more we know, or think we know (for example about "dark matter"), the more we will become aware and to believe that there must in fact be some sort of "higher power" or "new physics" that we actually know close to nothing of ...

"We know very little about the dark universe," said co-leader of the study, Catherine Heymans of the University of Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy, during a press conference announcing the findings here at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society."We don't know what the dark matter particle is. It's very widely believed that the final understanding of the dark universe is going to have to invoke some new physics."

[Edited 1/18/12 16:01pm]

Tremolina said:

I am a firm believer that the more we know, or think we know (for example about "dark matter"), the more we will become aware and to believe that there must in fact be some sort of "higher power" or "new physics" that we actually know close to nothing of ...

"We know very little about the dark universe," said co-leader of the study, Catherine Heymans of the University of Edinburgh's School of Physics and Astronomy, during a press conference announcing the findings here at the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society."We don't know what the dark matter particle is. It's very widely believed that the final understanding of the dark universe is going to have to invoke some new physics."

[Edited 1/18/12 16:01pm]

I agree to a degree. From what I've seen so far everytime it gets down to where we are there to finding the answer to everything the physics get all screwy therefore another theory needs to be purposed. It keeps us busy. As far as are we regressing we're losing some battles while gaining others, maybe we're exchanging a positive for a negative, seems like it sometimes.

PurpleJedi said:

Tremolina said:

The more we think we know about science, the more spiritual we will also grow.

Is what I believe.

That's an interesting theory, but IMO completely opposite of what's happening in society today. Science seems to be replacing spirituality overall.

think though,

the truley scientific types

spend time in deep meditation.

they strive for spirituality in the manner

of budhist. which btw is the religion that

einstein(sp) said would be the logical religion

in the new age.

as for pickin our leaders

we try to pick leaders who will represent

our needs, but we only have so many to pick from.

so it's not that we turn on who we pick

we don't get who we want from the git go.

those who are able to pick the winners

cause our choices to be qwite imputent.

makin them unable to really do anything in our behalf.

Tremolina said:

Beautifulstarr123 said:

Progressing scientifically and technically, yes. Spiritually, not at all.

The more we think we know about science, the more spiritual we will also grow.

Is what I believe.

This is true. If God is the Well-Spring of all knowledge, then we are closer to Him. To deny yourself of knowledge, is to deny yourself of God.

That's what I believe.

regressing..

(sigh)

Tremolina said:

Beautifulstarr123 said:

Progressing scientifically and technically, yes. Spiritually, not at all.

The more we think we know about science, the more spiritual we will also grow.

Is what I believe.

You’ve phrased that in such a way that the following doesn’t necessarily address your statement directly, but for the record I want to point out that those who are the best educated and deemed the most expert in their respective scientific fields tend to be far less religious or spiritual than the general population. For example, a 1998 survey of the National Academy of Sciences found that only 7% of their members expressed a belief in a personal god. The balance held beliefs that would be considered agnostic or atheist. That figure marked a slight decline in belief from a similar survey taken in 1933. I don’t believe there have been any more recent studies of the NAS, but most studies I’ve seen have shown that those with the highest levels of education in natural science show the same tendencies, if not as extreme as the NAS survey.

http://www.stephenjaygoul...le002.html

You’ve also stated that new areas of studies in physics will lead to support for spirituality. While this may come to be, generally physicists tend to be the least religious when studies break out scientific fields.

http://www.people-press.o...-religion/

You may well turn out to be correct, and if that is where the science takes us, then we should follow it. However, as we discussed in a thread in p&r recently, modern physics often gets invoked to support areas where it doesn’t really belong. Quantum physics in particular is incomprehensible to almost anyone who hasn’t dedicated their adult life to its study, and some people abuse its incomprehensibility to advocate for spiritual or religious beliefs. I’m not saying that’s what you have done here – you’re speculating and stating your beliefs, and that’s a-ok. I want to just state that we need to let the evidence guide us to the truth, whatever that turns out to be, not our existing beliefs.

Deadflow3r said:

Deadflow3r said:

Good question.

We know many things now we didn't know before but we have lost touch with the basics.

Example. My grandmother came to this country at 15 from Italy, around the year 1918. She met and married a 19 year old man from Italy and they went on to have 11 children together.

Felicia Giorgio lived to be 42. She could only speak Italian and she never read in any language. Her children helped her with banking and any area where she needed translation.

What Felicia could do is what we can no longer do. She had basic survival skills; raised chickens and killed them, grew vegetables, cooked everything from scratch and keep a family of 13 well fed and healthy. My grandefather was a butcher until the Depression. People back then could pretty much keep everything they owned in running order themselves.

I have never grown vegetables or killed anything bigger than a bug. I know nothing about wiring, plumbing or carpentry or bricklaying.

If we face an Armegeddon like situation I fear that many of us do not have the basic survival skills to pull through it.

We talk of the increasing gap between the wealthy and the poor. I think there is also a huge gap in survival skills and education between the haves and the have nots.

Obviously my post needs another looking at.

We don't have people on this planet with strong survival skills and moving to another place in the solar system is not going to help.

I think you are wrong... I have done all of these things, here in the midwest we thrive on planting and growing, hunting and gathering... I used to own all of my OWN power tools and used them to bulid furniture, and remodel my home, everything from hanging and mudding drywall, to laying floors,... I have done electrical and plumbing work... Its not that hard... I love to can and dry the foods that I have grown ... I have sewn clothes, pretty much if I want something I can make it... With the exception of electronics but we dont need those for survival really... Other than my ipod.. If my ipod goes Im dead...

I guess maybe it depends on what area of the world you live in... Or in the USA, what state you live in..

.

[Edited 1/19/12 5:23am]

tinaz said:

Deadflow3r said:

Obviously my post needs another looking at.

We don't have people on this planet with strong survival skills and moving to another place in the solar system is not going to help.

I think you are wrong... I have done all of these things, here in the midwest we thrive on planting and growing, hunting and gathering... I used to own all of my OWN power tools and used them to bulid furniture, and remodel my home, everything from hanging and mudding drywall, to laying floors,... I have done electrical and plumbing work... Its not that hard... I love to can and dry the foods that I have grown ... I have sewn clothes, pretty much if I want something I can make it... With the exception of electronics but we dont need those for survival really... Other than my ipod.. If my ipod goes Im dead...

I guess maybe it depends on what area of the world you live in... Or in the USA, what state you live in..

.

[Edited 1/19/12 5:23am]

I was going to say to Deadflow3r that there are PLENTY of people on this Earth who can survive (and HAVE to survive) just fine without the commodities of moden Western society.

Suburban America is a bad gauge for the rest of the world.

tinaz said:

Deadflow3r said:

Obviously my post needs another looking at.

We don't have people on this planet with strong survival skills and moving to another place in the solar system is not going to help.

I think you are wrong... I have done all of these things, here in the midwest we thrive on planting and growing, hunting and gathering... I used to own all of my OWN power tools and used them to bulid furniture, and remodel my home, everything from hanging and mudding drywall, to laying floors,... I have done electrical and plumbing work... Its not that hard... I love to can and dry the foods that I have grown ... I have sewn clothes, pretty much if I want something I can make it... With the exception of electronics but we dont need those for survival really... Other than my ipod.. If my ipod goes Im dead...

I guess maybe it depends on what area of the world you live in... Or in the USA, what state you live in..

.

[Edited 1/19/12 5:23am]

some of us even own land and homes without 'lectricity, running water or indoor facilities. we know how to chop wood, fish, hunt and other survival type things.

[Edited 1/19/12 9:37am]

PurpleJedi said:

tinaz said:

I think you are wrong... I have done all of these things, here in the midwest we thrive on planting and growing, hunting and gathering... I used to own all of my OWN power tools and used them to bulid furniture, and remodel my home, everything from hanging and mudding drywall, to laying floors,... I have done electrical and plumbing work... Its not that hard... I love to can and dry the foods that I have grown ... I have sewn clothes, pretty much if I want something I can make it... With the exception of electronics but we dont need those for survival really... Other than my ipod.. If my ipod goes Im dead...

I guess maybe it depends on what area of the world you live in... Or in the USA, what state you live in..

.

[Edited 1/19/12 5:23am]

I was going to say to Deadflow3r that there are PLENTY of people on this Earth who can survive (and HAVE to survive) just fine without the commodities of moden Western society.

Suburban America is a bad gauge for the rest of the world.

This is true.

I am on the list of people who don't know jack shit about planting, hunting, building etc. I came home from school and went straight to the girls club where I learned pottery and all sorts of arts and crafts.

The Midwesterner is a whole different animal, IMO. I always think of them as outdoor people. Maybe I am wrong. But honestly I can not survive by myself stranded anywhere.

XxAxX said:

tinaz said:

I think you are wrong... I have done all of these things, here in the midwest we thrive on planting and growing, hunting and gathering... I used to own all of my OWN power tools and used them to bulid furniture, and remodel my home, everything from hanging and mudding drywall, to laying floors,... I have done electrical and plumbing work... Its not that hard... I love to can and dry the foods that I have grown ... I have sewn clothes, pretty much if I want something I can make it... With the exception of electronics but we dont need those for survival really... Other than my ipod.. If my ipod goes Im dead...

I guess maybe it depends on what area of the world you live in... Or in the USA, what state you live in..

.

[Edited 1/19/12 5:23am]

some of us even own land and homes without 'lectricity, running water or indoor facilities. we know how to chop wood, fish, hunt and other survival type things.

[Edited 1/19/12 9:37am]

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...

KingBAD said:

XxAxX said:

some of us even own land and homes without 'lectricity, running water or indoor facilities. we know how to chop wood, fish, hunt and other survival type things.

[Edited 1/19/12 9:37am]

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...

it is a lovely (if rustic) cabin by the lakes

XxAxX said:

KingBAD said:

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...

it is a lovely (if rustic) cabin by the lakes

why am i gettin a outhouse vibe???

XxAxX said:

i vote for progressing. but, i think id' want to break the word 'humanity' up and make a distinction between human understanding and human character.

imo, overall humankind is making rapid progress in understanding; each new day brings fresh images of pictures from mars, or distant nebulae, thus expanding our knowledge base and broadening our horizons.

it's a great time in which to live because access to information has never been better, and because information is now widely available through the internet to everyone and not just the moneyed, educated elite, i think as a species in general we can look forward to exponential growth in shared knowledge.

as for human nature, i think our understanding of our own brains and emotional responses, thus our maturity, has not kept pace with the demands we're making on ourselves.

for example more new technology means more overall adaptation and resulting stress, and we don't handle stress well, as organisms. stress hormones literally ruin our brains. and all the new information we're constantly absorbing, along with constant change and our awareness of change, causes tons of tress and tension in our daily lives.

religion can help humankind, in terms of meditation and self study, and maybe pharmaceuticals and/or genetic engineering will also allow us to tap into the pineal gland and become more adept at biofeedback techniques to lower our blood pressure, slow heart rates, heal and regenerate ourselves better, live longer and etc. genetic markers for mental illness and deviant behavior are being identified every day, and someday we may have the capacity to adjust those factors in ourselves, deliberately.

as a species i believe we have potential to go toward better or worse. but, there is always the 'random' factor, the unpredictable twist of fate. like, if hitler had obtained a nuclear weapon, think how things could have been different.

personally, i want to think that there's hope for humanity if we can figure our own selves out before the onset of the next ice age. i think we are headed toward learning to use our minds to control matter, or, as it could be said, 'enlightenment'. using the human kind to alter matter has been proven possible, albeit on a small scale. so, it's not impossible that we will become able to improve ourselves, our physical forms and emotional states, deliberately.

then again, maybe aliens will come help evolve us.

okay. that's all i got for now.

Good read!

I think neither nor. The population gets bigger so there's just more morons, sociopaths, criminals on the news etc. There's more NEWS too

KingBAD said:

XxAxX said:

it is a lovely (if rustic) cabin by the lakes

why am i gettin a outhouse vibe???

damn. it's true the outhouse sucks but you just leave the door open and take in the splendid view. which helps you converse and spend quality time with aunt bessie who'll be weeding the garden nearby

KingBAD said:

XxAxX said:

some of us even own land and homes without 'lectricity, running water or indoor facilities. we know how to chop wood, fish, hunt and other survival type things.

[Edited 1/19/12 9:37am]

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww...

City boy! I don't blame you. I couldn't fathom living without running water and indoor facilities.

aunt bessie

We have become too materialistic, and I know for sure that a few years ago, I felt like this world was a horrible place to live in with no more justice left for anything or anyone. But I also believe it was a part of realizing I'm not young anymore, situations I was facing and being depressed, and it's all in who you decide to associate with and not forgetting who you really are.